When the lights go out. 23 Nov 2006 GM1SXX
A fierce debate is raging within the UK and around the world about how to supply the ever increasing demand for energy while oil and coal stocks are dwindling. Many of the 'greens' would suggest a switch to wind power and wave power could solve the UK's power problems.. The reality as always, is not so simple. A quick 'fiddle' with the online calculator at...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/electricity_calc/html/1.stm will show what power generation for the UK really entails.
This excellent excellent online calculator that allows you to do some 'modelling' to see what sort of power generation mix can fit the bill, as it were. I loathe windmills and I'm not too keen on coal or oil either. Windmills are a blot on the landscape and to generate the sort of power that a typical nuclear power station supplies would take an awful lot of them. Worst of all, they are intermittent and therefore cannot be guaranteed to be able to supply 'base load'. A sizeable wind turbine might generate 20MW on a good day. Contract that with a single power plant of the AGR type that can deliver around 1300MW on virtually a 24*7 basis. No contest. To provide that sort of power output would require 66 wind turbines that would of course have to turn 24hours a day, seven days a week.
Fossil fuel stations kill people quietly, slowly and of course add massively to the World's CO2 burden.
I live within easy commuting distance of the Hunterston nuclear power station. This is now an old station and in the process of having boiler repairs done but when fully operational, it's four gas cooled reactors provided almost 2000MW to the supply grid. Thats 100 wind-turbines-worth of power. On the hills near to the town of Ardrossan, not too far from Hunterston, there is a wind-farm with 10 wind-turbines. Not only are they an eyesore, they don't actually do anything for a large percentage of the time. Winds here either are too low or too strong (yes, too strong!) so for much of the time, they lie idle. You might think 'green power' from wind-turbines is safer than nuclear. Well, people do fall off them, get crushed and mangled and suffer all manner of accidents. Wind-turbines are BIG machinery with gears and moving parts.
Have a look at this URL (US accidents) if you don't believe me. http://www.wind-works.org/articles/BreathLife.html
France has a different approach from the UK. They embraced nuclear power as a solution to their lack of abundant natural resources and most of the country's energy is produced in this way with few complaints from the public. Sure, like the UK they have not yet solved the waste issue but its a fact that modern reactor designs produce far less high and intermediate level waste than older designs. Perhaps if the UK government renamed their proposed waste repositories 'Waste Management sites', there might be less of a public outcry about waste dumping because for sure, these sites WILL have to be managed in future and can't simply be constructed then forgotten. Perhaps an approach like that taken at PANTEX in Texas where scrapped nuclear material including Plutonium 'pits' from weapons is stored in securely managed shelters might be more palatable to the general public although underground and not surface storage might be more suited to UK conditions.
Some of the other waste comprises cladding and here at least, modern reactors have less cladding material on the rods/pins and therefore produce less waste of this type than older pins used for instance in the old UK MAGNOX stations. Low-level waste is also produced and most of this is simply compressed, canned and buried in trenches at designated sites.
The BBC 'Electricity Calculator ' is more than a gimmick, it does demonstrate the difficulty of keeping the lights on as the supply of fossil fuel dwindles. I don't think windmills will hack it.
Don't believe me? Do your own sums. This simple calculator may open a few eyes to the real issues behind power generation.
One last point about windmills. They don't do much for most of the time. That means you need a lot more installed capacity than your expected power demand. It's fine and dandy to be 'green'. but quite another thing to try to do away with fossil fuels and nuclear power. These power sources have their critics but they currently supply most of the UK's power.
Of course if you wanted to be *really* 'green' you could scrap the fossil fuelled and nuclear stations and cover the UK with around nine and a quarter thousand large ugly wind-turbines.
That should just about do the trick. Aye right! Here's to nice green power. I think the reality might be somewhat different.
73 Al
GM1SXX